Chapter 10

Allegra set her alarm for five-thirty the next morning, to be sure she wouldn't be late, and she wanted to be mentally prepared for her new adventure. She was determined to be fully alert and ready to learn everything she had to. She wore a simple black pantsuit with a white blouse that she had worn for work in New York, with her red hair pulled back in a neat bun. She looked serious and professional. She gave herself a full hour to drive to Bel Air, after his comment the night before about the morning traffic from Santa Monica. She discovered he was right. She arrived at Henry Platt's home exactly two minutes before she was due to start at eight-thirty. She had just made it, she wanted to be prompt on her first day. Particularly since Carly had said punctuality was important to him. He was a stickler for precision, and reliability.

She realized that her hand was shaking when she rang the bell. The same woman answered the door as the night before, in an immaculate white uniform this time, and there was a man vacuuming behind her. The house was already in full activity at eight-thirty in the morning.

"Hello, I'm Louise." The woman smiled at her. She looked like she was somewhere in her fifties, and she seemed warm and welcoming. It was a nice start to Allegra's day and very different from the serious corporate atmosphere at the publishing house in New York she just came from.

"Mr. Platt says you're a wonderful cook," Allegra whispered to her, and Louise smiled again.

"He's easy to please, as long as you serve his favorites," Louise said modestly, and pointed to the library. Allegra thanked her and hurried to the room where she had met Henry Platt the day before. He was sitting at his desk, wearing his headphones, playing silently on an electric keyboard on his desk and stopping to make notes. Allegra didn't want to interrupt him, and stood awkwardly waiting for him to notice her, not knowing what to do. She didn't want to wave at him or make noise. He was deeply engrossed in what he was doing. After a few minutes, he glanced up after he jotted down a note, and saw her. He looked surprised at first, and then he smiled and took his headphones off.

"Sorry. I was preparing something for my meeting later with a screenwriter, for a movie we're working on together. If you go through the studio, you'll find a little office. That's for you, you can leave your things in there. Then come back here and I'll get you started on the emails." He pointed to the door they'd gone through the night before when he showed her the sound studio, and she found the office easily. There was a closet, and she hung up her jacket and left her purse in it. There was a pad and pen on the desk, and she grabbed them and hurried back to the library, where he was waiting for her. He was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans and looked informal. But his eyes were bright and alive. He pointed to a chair across from his desk and began rattling off responses to various emails. She managed to keep up with him, but barely.

"Am I going too fast?" he asked her at one point, and she was surprised by the variety of matters he dealt with. A concert in Tokyo he declined, one in the Netherlands he accepted. A speech he agreed to give in Paris, meetings in London in the fall about a movie. The list was long. "Just leave anything personal. It's a short list and I'll deal with them tonight. If you have questions, make a list and I can answer them at lunchtime. I don't usually eat lunch, and if I do, I eat at my desk, unless I have someone here. You can take your lunch hour when you get a break in the action," he said, and she nodded. "Was I right about the traffic, by the way?" he asked her.

"Completely. I'm going to look for an apartment this weekend, as close to here as I can afford," she said. But with the salary he was paying her, her range had broadened considerably. He was paying her almost twice what she had made in New York, and L.A. was a less expensive city. Rents were noticeably lower, she had observed in the ads she'd read in the real estate section of the paper, although she wasn't familiar with all the good neighborhoods and those to avoid. She would figure it out when she saw them. He looked at her for a minute then, before she went back to her office to get started.

"What does your family think about your moving out here? I assume they're all in the East, given your history until now," which was all East Coast. He had read her résumé carefully that morning before she came to work, to get a better sense of her. She had a good education, he had noticed that immediately, just as Carly at the employment agency had. She'd been supplying his assistants for twenty years and knew what was important to him. He liked well-educated, smart young women who presented well, and were ladylike. He didn't want hippies, tattoos, or women who drank heavily or drugged, stayed out till four a.m. , and came to work hungover and too wrecked to work. He was a serious artist with a huge career and wanted a capable assistant to help him. He liked what he read on Allegra's CV, and her glowing reference from Pippa. And he liked the conservative way she looked. He could take her to meetings with him.

Allegra hesitated before she answered his question. She didn't want to sound pathetic, but the truth was unfortunately very simple.

"I don't have a family, sir," she said quietly.

"None at all?" He looked surprised when she shook her head. She was young to have lost everyone.

"My father died last year. He was in the military and was killed in Iraq. My grandparents are deceased. I have no siblings, and my mother lives in London." It was a clean sweep except for her mother, and he was relieved for her. She was very young to have no relatives at all. It made her coming to L.A. on her own even more remarkable. There was something about her that suggested to him that she was an unusual girl. Her reference letter from Pippa indicated that to him too, without coming right out and saying it.

"Do you visit your mother often?" he asked, feeling slightly intrusive, but he was curious.

"No, I don't," Allegra said, looking him directly in the eyes.

"Will she come to visit you here?"

"No," Allegra said simply. The way she said it discouraged him from asking more about her. Allegra made it very clear that she had no family whatsoever. "You won't have to worry about family reunions and events, or holidays. I'm on my own." He wondered if she had come to L.A. for a man. He couldn't think of any other reason why a woman her age would come to a city where she knew no one. But he felt awkward asking her the question.

"Well, I'm very pleased to have you here to help me. I hope you'll enjoy the job and stay until we grow old together." She laughed at the way he said it. "I am old, of course, but I'm planning to work for another forty years, which will make me a hundred and two when I retire, so get ready." She was smiling and so was he.

"I'm all set. And I'd better get to your emails."

"Excellent." He put his headphones on and got back to work, and she left for her office, with the computer set up for her on the desk. He was thinking about her. She was an odd girl, but he liked how straightforward she was, and how brave she seemed, without being aggressive about it. She seemed like a gentle person, but he could tell that she had backbone, and he liked that about her. He wondered what her boyfriend was like, and hoped he was a good guy, and wouldn't cause any problems. That was often how he lost his assistants. They broke up with their boyfriends and left L.A., or they got married like the last one. He also recognized that he worked them hard, because he worked hard himself and kept long hours. He had lost a number of assistants who preferred the more relaxed youth-friendly atmosphere of the dot-com firms in San Francisco, where they could play games with young people their age at lunchtime, show up in shorts and flip-flops, and bring their dogs to work.

He ran a tight ship, and from the serious atmosphere in his home, Allegra felt that she could meet his expectations.

He continued to work at his keyboard and make notes until lunchtime. When he stopped, Allegra reappeared to report to him.

"All done with the emails. There were a hundred and nine. I answered them as you told me to. Seven of them were personal. I sent them back to you so you can respond yourself."

"Are you sure you got all the others done? That's very fast." He looked surprised and a little dubious.

"Yes. I added a brief personal greeting, hoping they're well, and then I told them what you asked me to say."

"Very impressive. Are you always that fast?"

"I try to be." She smiled at him. The personal emails were from people who seemed to be friends, although not close ones. They all mentioned that they hadn't seen him in several months and assumed that he was working on films. So they were more acquaintances than friends. Allegra knew from Carly at the agency that Henry was divorced, and she had noticed a photograph in a silver frame in the library, of two young children, a boy and a girl. The photograph was old and slightly yellowed, and she assumed they were his children. There were no other photographs of them in the room, although there were photographs of him with various celebrities and movie stars. And he had two Oscars on display.

Louise brought him a tray with a sandwich on it, and he told Allegra that she was welcome to make herself a sandwich in the kitchen, or Louise would.

"You can go out if you prefer, but there's no place in Bel Air to eat really, except the Bel Air Hotel, which is rather grand. You'll have to go to Beverly Hills if you want to go to a restaurant," he explained. She had noticed that on the way to work. There was no commercial area in Bel Air that she had seen.

"I'll grab an apple and a yogurt in the kitchen, if that's all right," she said simply, and he nodded. He couldn't help noticing that she had a lovely figure and was very slim, so she obviously didn't eat a lot, or maybe she couldn't afford to. He couldn't guess what kind of background she came from, although she was very well brought up and had gone to good schools. But a father in the military didn't suggest money, and her lack of family was intriguing. She didn't seem like a black sheep or a rebel, and she had a very gentle demeanor.

He finished his lunch quickly, as he always did, and was back at work an hour later when she came to report in after lunch. He was in the studio by then, turning on some speakers, and he lit up a large video screen.

"I'm meeting with a screenwriter. We've done several movies together. We're working on two at the moment. He's very talented, Jordan Allen."

Henry asked her to make several calls for him then, for reservations at various restaurants where he was going to have lunch meetings, and one at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She had just finished the calls when the doorbell rang, and a tall, well-built, very handsome young man in a T-shirt and black jeans and motorcycle boots walked into the studio and greeted Henry warmly. He had a kind of cocky, arrogant air, his dark hair was tousled, and he looked to be about thirty-five. He hadn't shaved in a week. It was a look he cultivated, and not a beard he was growing. He glanced over at Allegra and stared at her for a minute. Henry introduced him as the screenwriter Jordan Allen, and she went to the kitchen to order coffee for them both, at Henry's request.

As soon as Allegra left the room, Jordan turned to Henry. "Wow! Where did you find her? You've seriously upgraded your office. She's gorgeous."

"Behave yourself." Henry laughed at him. "She's my new assistant. She just started today, and if you steal her or scare her off, I'll kill you. I've lost two assistants in four months, and I'm desperate."

"Me too. I want her. I need her more than you do. I haven't dated a decent woman in six months, and you're a workaholic. You don't deserve an assistant who looks like that."

"I hadn't noticed," Henry said primly, and Jordan laughed at him.

"I don't believe you. You're not dead, that old, or blind. She's the best-looking woman I've seen in a year, and I work in the film industry. She's wasted on you if you hadn't noticed. How old is she?"

"I forget. Twenty-three, twenty-four, something like that. She just moved here from New York, and I swear if you run off with her, I'll steal your assistant."

"You're welcome to her. It's a deal," Jordan said, just as Allegra came back into the room, holding a tray with two mugs of coffee. She set it down where they could reach it, went back to her office, and closed the door. There was a window where she could see into the studio and they could see her. Some responses to her earlier emails had come in, and she went through them, oblivious to the two men in the sound studio. They were both wearing headphones, watching clips of the films they were working on, and Henry played the pieces he was composing for them. They frowned at times, listened again, made notes, Henry would try a different version, or sometimes Jordan loved what he played the first time. It was minute, intense work, and they were in the studio for more than two hours. Jordan had glanced over at Allegra a number of times, and she didn't notice. She was busy with her own work.

After the meeting, Henry walked Jordan out. They both seemed pleased with the result of their time together, and just before he left, Jordan turned to Henry at the front door.

"And don't forget, we're trading assistants. I'll send mine over in the morning. Have yours ready for the exchange." Henry laughed at him. Jordan was a joker and he liked to tease. Women constantly fell at his feet and he took full advantage of it. He was a famous womanizer around town. Allegra had paid no attention to him at all, which amused Henry. She was serious about her work, which pleased him. If she'd flirted with Jordan, he would have been annoyed. He took another look at her then, when he went back to her office after Jordan was gone. He had noticed that she was fresh and young and attractive, but she dressed soberly in a businesslike, non-seductive way, and he had paid no attention to how beautiful she was. Jordan was right. She was striking. But all that did to Henry was make him want to protect her in a fatherly way, not seduce her.

He gave her a mountain of things to type, file, organize, and research as a result of the meeting, and he was surprised when she showed up in the library at six o'clock to tell him she had finished what he gave her. She was ready to leave for the day. Her normal leaving time was five-thirty.

"Already? You can't have done all that by now," he said incredulously.

"I did, sir," she said calmly.

"Carefully? You didn't just rush through it?" He was dubious that she could have done it all.

"I promise. I paid close attention to your directions, and I finished it all."

"You're clearly a magician." He smiled at her. She'd done a good job all day, and she was pleasant and easygoing to work with. There was no drama, she just kept working at a steady pace until all the assignments were complete. She didn't waste time. "You did good work, Allegra," he said seriously. "If you keep this up, we're going to work very well together. Thank you."

"I really enjoyed it. I had a good time today." She liked being able to complete her tasks and move on to the next ones. He kept up a steady flow of projects for her. There was no downtime, no time to think about her own life. It was exactly what she wanted.

"See you tomorrow," he said, and she left. It took her over an hour to drive home to Santa Monica, to the hotel. The traffic was heavier and there had been an accident, which slowed everyone down. Looking back at the day, she loved her new job and she liked her employer. She was delighted with her move to Los Angeles. There were still hard moments at night, when she thought about Shep, and missed him. She worried about him, but he wasn't hers to worry about anymore, and the job was going to keep her busy. Moving away had been the right decision, and things had fallen into place very quickly. She couldn't imagine a time yet when Shep wouldn't come to mind at every opportunity. But at least for now, in the daytime, she wouldn't have downtime to think about him. It was a blessing she was grateful for. She would never forget him, but she had to find a way to not think about him anymore. That was a much harder job than any assignment Henry Platt could give her.

—

Her second day at work was even busier than the first. Henry was in and out of the sound studio all day, and every time he emerged, he had another stack of projects to give her. She didn't stop all day, not even for lunch. She went out to the kitchen for a cup of tea at four o'clock and chatted with Louise for a few minutes, who handed her a plate of cookies to go with the tea.

"You work as hard as he does," Louise commented approvingly. "He doesn't like lazy people." Allegra laughed at the comment. "His last assistant was always putting on lipstick and talking to her boyfriend. She's lucky she quit to get married. He was going to fire her," Louise said matter-of-factly, and Allegra smiled as she helped herself to another cookie.

"Does he spend much time with his children?" Allegra asked innocently, and Louise frowned and lowered her voice to answer her.

"He doesn't see them at all. I've been here eighteen years and I've never met them. They had a very bad mother. They're old now, older than you. I think the mother said bad things about him and they believed her. Now he doesn't want to see them."

"That's sad," Allegra said quietly. She wondered if he missed them, as she thought of the yellowed photograph in the silver frame in the library. They were very young then.

"He never married again. I never see women, except for big parties like the Oscars. He works all the time. He's a good man," Louise said, clearly devoted to him. "He's a good boss, a good person." It spoke well of him that his employee thought so highly of him and admired him so much, Allegra thought.

She wondered what had happened with his children. Louise seemed to have the general gist of it, with a bad divorce, but something really awful must have happened, if he hadn't seen them in the eighteen years that Louise had worked for him. And he seemed like a warm person, not like her own mother. Henry must have been badly wounded by his ex-wife if it had caused a permanent rift with his children. It made her think again of Shep. She was sure he wouldn't have done what he did if they'd had children. But he was so deeply disturbed now that he might have done it even then. He was no longer in any condition to make sound decisions or maintain close relationships. In a way, Allegra was sorry they hadn't had a baby. But she had felt too young, their life was so unstable with him in the army, and her life would have been infinitely harder now if she had a baby to worry about, and a father who had abandoned them. She had lived it. She didn't want that for a child. It was better that they had had none.

"Miss Allegra, are you okay?" Louise stirred her from her reverie. She had gotten lost in thinking about Shep again, and was a million miles away for a minute, and Louise had seen it.

"Sorry, I'm fine. Just thinking about work."

"You looked very sad for a minute. Like someone died."

"No, I'm fine. I just have a lot to do. Thank you for the tea and cookies."

"You need to eat more!" Louise said, in a scolding voice, wagging a finger at her, and Allegra smiled and hurried back to her office, pushing Shep to the back of her mind again. The piece of information Louise had shared with her about Henry not seeing his children had been interesting, and a glimpse into the private side of him. He had had her sign the confidentiality agreement the day before. As Carly had said, it was a short standard agreement, which made perfect sense for a man of his position, with her working in his home, and privy to private information, like what she had just learned about him. The agreement was to prevent greedy, ill-intentioned people from selling him out to the tabloids, which could easily happen. She wasn't offended by being asked to sign it.

Despite skipping lunch, she didn't finish her day's assignments until after seven o'clock. Henry was still in the studio when she went to say good night to him.

"I'm sorry it got so late. I finished everything," she said, when he took the headset off. He'd been in the studio all day, and she'd been buried in her office. There had been a never-ending flood of paperwork across her desk.

"Are you in a hurry to get home?" he asked her, and she could see another wave coming toward her. He obviously wanted to give her more. She was tired, but didn't say so, and she hadn't eaten a real meal all day, since she never ate breakfast, just a cup of coffee before she left for work.

"No, it's fine. Is there something you'd like me to do?" She thought he looked tired too. He'd been wrestling with the latest score all day, after his meeting with Jordan Allen the day before.

"Do you like meat loaf?" It was such an odd question that she laughed.

"Yes. Why?"

"Louise makes the best meat loaf in the world. It's my favorite dinner. And I never saw you stop for lunch today. I need a break, and she made meat loaf tonight. Do you want to stay and have dinner? I'm going back to the studio after that." She hesitated. She didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with him by refusing. And he had asked her so kindly. She was tired and wanted to go home, and not prolong the day. It was late, and she'd been there for eleven hours working nonstop.

She thanked him and accepted the invitation. And Louise set two places for them in the dining room. It was a civilized moment that reminded her of Newport again. There was meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans. It was a healthy dinner. She hadn't had anything like it in weeks. She was living on salads and food she bought in a deli near her hotel, or skipping meals entirely. It was a relaxing break for both of them after a long day.

He questioned her about her family. He asked her about her father and his being in the army.

"Did you travel all over the world with him?" he asked, intrigued.

"No, he was in military intelligence, usually in war zones. Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, the Sudan, Panama, Libya, Bosnia. None of them were places he could have taken me to. He went wherever there was trouble and stayed for a year or two." Henry was surprised.

"So you were with your mother?" he asked her, and she shook her head, enjoying the delicious home-cooked meal Louise had prepared.

"No, I stayed with my paternal grandparents when I was very young, and then boarding school for seven years after they died." It sounded like a lonely life to him, but she looked at ease with herself, and didn't say anything derogatory about her parents, which was unusual.

"Were you happy in boarding school?" he asked, curious about her. She shook her head in answer.

"Actually, I hated it. It was like prison, and I was always the odd man out, the girl who had no family," she said matter-of-factly. "In summer, I went to camp in Maine. And on school holidays, I stayed with my maternal grandparents in Newport, Rhode Island. They had a house there, and the rest of the time they lived in New York. The house was very comfortable, but they weren't thrilled to have a child on their hands. They were quite old by then, but they had a busy social life they enjoyed. I always felt like an intruder." She was so open and honest that it startled him.

"And where was your mother in all this, if you don't mind my asking?" He was trying to fit the puzzle pieces of her life together, and she felt surprisingly comfortable talking to him, maybe because he was so much older, and seemed so benevolent. "Somehow it sounds like your mother wasn't part of the story, with all those grandparents involved, boarding school and camp and an absentee father."

"She wasn't part of the story. She left when I was six. She went to New York and moved to England a year later. So my father had to figure out who to leave me with for a year or two at a time while he was away. He visited me at school between tours of duty before he took off again." Henry was shocked by what she said, and stared at her.

"She just left? Like that? Goodbye?"

"No goodbye." Allegra smiled at him. She looked wise and mature when she did. "She forgot to say goodbye."

"And you never went to visit her?"

"I wasn't invited. I've seen her four or five times in the past eighteen years. She's not keen on motherhood. She was young when she married my father. She was a year younger than I am now when she had me," although not for an instant could Allegra imagine abandoning a child at her age, or any other age.

"You really are an extraordinary person," he said. "That's quite a history. And who is there now?" he asked her gently, almost afraid to ask. But he was as direct and straightforward as she was.

"No one. There's me. My father's parents died when I was eleven, which is why I had to go to boarding school. The others died in the last two years, and so did my father. Which leaves me. My mother is in England, but we really have no reason to see each other. She gave up custody when she left my father. I saw her seven or eight months ago for lunch. We're strangers to each other. I think we both prefer it that way now." She didn't look devastated as she said it. She was used to her history by now, and she had survived it. The one person she left out of the story was Shep. But that still hurt too much to talk about, and he wasn't her family anymore. There was no reason to tell Henry about him, or that she was in the process of a divorce.

"I don't know how you came through all that and are as sane as you are. And you seem very sane to me."

"I hope so," she said quietly.

"Family relationships can be complicated. And some parents do terrible things to their children. I have two children. I went through a very bad divorce thirty years ago. My wife left me for someone else, a film producer I worked with. Our children were very young, and she poisoned them against me. She remarried, moved to Italy, and made it impossible to see the kids. By the time that marriage broke up, and I could get near them again, the children believed her. They thought I abandoned them. They didn't believe that she had kept them from me. I don't see them, and they've never wanted to be close to me again. It hurt terribly for a long time, but I've made my peace with it. They don't want me in their lives, and don't need me, and after all this time, I'm all right with it. I'm here, if they ever want to see me again. My ex-wife never admitted to them what she did to prevent me from seeing them for fifteen years. People do terrible things sometimes. It sounds like you were doubly unlucky with your parents. Do you hate them for abandoning you?" he asked her, looking at her intently.

"No," she said quietly. "I don't feel anything for my mother. And I think my father was destroyed from the inside out, from what he did in all those war zones. He was like a killing machine with no heart. That way of life destroys people." She thought of Shep when she said it and felt the familiar tug at her heart. He was the only regret she had, the only wound that hadn't healed yet, but she knew it would one day. If she had healed from losing all the others, she would heal from losing him too. She was determined to now. Her own survival depended on it.

"You're a very strong woman, Allegra. I know what that feels like, losing people you love, a parent or a child. It's like having your arms and legs torn off and your insides ripped out. And then one day you wake up, and you realize that you survived it. The sun shines again, you're still breathing and alive. You work and live and meet people and laugh. My work got me through it. Writing music helps me. Have you ever written about how you felt when you were alone?" She shook her head. "You should one day. It will free you. But you seem to be doing fine." He had enormous respect for her. They had finished dinner by then, and Louise had left them alone. She could tell that they were talking seriously. "I think I'm very lucky that you showed up for the job. And now you have an employer and a friend in L.A.," he said, smiling at her. She felt sorry for him about his children, but he seemed to have recovered from it. It was a long time ago. She had recovered from her losses, except for Shep, but in time, she would recover from him too. She had to. There was no other choice. Henry Platt seemed like a good friend to have.

Louise topped off the meal with homemade apple pie and vanilla ice cream. Allegra smiled at Henry when they were finished.

"Thank you for a wonderful evening, and a delicious dinner…and a job."

"Thank you for being brave enough to come to L.A." He smiled back at her.

"You're brave when there's no other choice," she said wisely.

She left a little while later. It had been an amazing evening, with their exchange of confidences. She really did feel as though she had a friend. They knew each other's histories now.

After she left, he thought back on what she'd told him, and marveled at the strength of the human spirit, in the worst possible circumstances of loss and deprivation, and how remarkable it was that she had survived. She was a brave woman, and he felt sure that there was more she hadn't told him. He had secrets of his own. There were places in his heart where no one would ever go again.